Daily Mail keeps on at asking top Labour officials awkward questions over peado links
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26333558
Harriet Harman expresses 'regret' after Daily Mail claims
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Originally Posted by BBC (State) News
The National Council for Civil Liberties granted "affiliate" status to the Paedophile Information Exchange.
The Daily Mail has urged the deputy Labour leader to explain this link.
Ms Harman accused the paper of running a "smear campaign". Her spokeswoman later said Ms Harman "regrets the existence of" the pro-paedophile group.
Appearing on BBC Two's Newsnight programme on Monday, she repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether it had been a mistake to allow the Paedophile Information Exchange to be affiliated to the civil liberties group.
'Titivating photographs'
"It is not the case that my work, when I was at the National Council for Civil Liberties, was influenced by PIE, was apologising for paedophilia or colluding with paedophilia. That is an unfair inference and a smear," she said.
"My work has always been, when I was at the National Council for Civil Liberties and when I have been in politics and ministerial office, to protect children, especially from child abuse."
Harriet Harman: "That is an unfair inference and a smear"
Her spokeswoman later told the BBC: "Of course she regrets any organisation's involvement with them, including the National Council for Civil Liberties. But they were immaterial to her work.
"She does not regret joining the National Council for Civil Liberties. By the time she arrived they were very much under the radar and her work focused on other things, such as marches, apartheid and trade unions."
From 1978 to 1982 Ms Harman was legal officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties, which was the predecessor to campaign group Liberty.
The Paedophile Information Exchange - a group that spoke positively about adults attracted to children - was granted affiliate status with the National Council for Civil Liberties before Ms Harman joined.
On Monday, she released a statement saying the Daily Mail was "not entitled" to "smear me with innuendo because they disagree with me politically and hate my values".
Ms Harman then told Newsnight: "It is ironic that they're accusing me of supporting indecency in relation to children when they themselves are not above producing photographs of very young girls, titivating photographs, in bikinis."
On Tuesday she tweeted the message "when it comes to decency and sexualisation of children, would you take lessons from the Daily Mail?" alongside a picture of a Daily Mail website article featuring a picture of a 12-year-old in her "first bikini shoot".
In her statement Ms Harman also said anyone could apply to join the National Council for Civil Liberties upon payment of a fee, and it had had about 6,000 members and nearly 1,000 affiliated organisations when she joined.
'Despicable views'
The newspaper initially accused her of having "tried to water down child pornography laws" during her time at the National Council for Civil Liberties, and then said she had failed to answer the central questions in its report.
It has said Ms Harman, the shadow culture secretary, and her husband, Labour MP Jack Dromey, who also used to work at the National Council for Civil Liberties, had instead used "pedantry and obfuscation" to counter its claims.
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Originally Posted by BBC (State) News
Former Labour Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, who as the the National Council for Civil Liberties' general secretary from 1974 to 1983 has also featured in the Daily Mail's coverage, has yet to comment on the story. Ms Hewitt stood down as an MP in 2010.
A spokesman for the newspaper said: "For 10 weeks now the Mail has repeatedly asked three leading Labour figures to answer questions about the involvement of the NCCL, a body in which they played leading roles, with a vile paedophile group.
"The belated statements today (Monday) of Ms Harman and her husband - full of pedantry and obfuscation - failed to answer the Mail's central points."
Mr Dromey, in a statement released on Monday, said he had made "repeated public condemnations" of the pro-paedophile group, describing the accusations against him as "untrue".
"Sexual abuse of children is evil and I have always viewed paedophiles and any group associated with them as evil," he added.
"During my time on the NCCL executive, I was at the forefront of repeated public condemnations of PIE and their despicable views."
The National Council for Civil Liberties was founded in 1934 as a result of fears that the right to peaceful protest was under threat.
According to Liberty, its successor group, the founders' aim was to defend "the whole spirit of British freedom".
The Paedophile Information Exchange was an international organisation of people who traded obscene material.
It made national newspaper headlines in the early 1980s when members faced charges of publishing and sending articles through the post, and was disbanded in 1984.
Its ex-leader reportedly said paedophilia was "as much a healthy part of the natural diversity of our species as red hair or left-handedness".
Excellent work by the Daily Mail, keep asking the awkward questions. Moral relativism has always been a feature of the left.
Thoughts?
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Toby Young in the Telegraph has now written an add-on piece:
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Originally Posted by Toby Young, the Telegraph
After refusing to admit that the National Council for Civil Liberties link to the Paedophile Information Exchange was a "mistake" on Newsnight last night (see above), Harriet Harman has changed tack this morning. A spokesman for Harman told the BBC that she "regrets the existence of" the PIE. "Of course she regrets any organisation's involvement with them, including the National Council for Civil Liberties,” the spokesman said. "But they were immaterial to her work."
That's a step in the right direction, but hardly sufficient. Her spokesman emphasised that the PIE became an "affiliate" of the NCCL's before Harman joined the organisation ("[Harman] regrets the existence of PIE and she regrets their involvement with NCCL before she joined"), but she still hasn't addressed the question of why she agreed to become the NCCL's legal officer in the first place, given the organisation's links with the notorious paedophile group, or why the PIE was allowed to remain under the umbrella of the NCCL until 1983. Let's not forget that the PIE lobbied for the legalisation of sex between adults and children – children as young as four. There's also the question of why Harman, in her capacity as the NCCL's legal officer, petitioned the Home Office to reduce sentences for convicted paedophiles and urged the Crown not to prosecute people found in possession of naked pictures of children unless it could be proven that the children in question had been harmed.
Click the link here to read more analysis of the situation by Young - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/to...dophile-group/
